The large underground cave system near Carlsbad, New Mexico, was discovered by a local teen-aged boy in 1897.
President Calvin Coolidge directed the development of plans for a national park in the 1920’s (Herbert Hoover sought additional land during his term), and the National Park was created by the US Congress in 1930.
(These were Republican Presidents. It is sad to recognize how the growth and maintenance of the National Parks is now politically-divisive.)
In August of 1934, Mr. Carroll Marston of San Diego received a postcard from Mother and Daddy who were visiting Carlsbad.
The hand-tinted photograph shows the lunch room in a portion of the “Big Room” of the cavern.
(The Big Room is the largest natural underground chamber in the United States.)
A catering service offered refreshments to visitors who wished to dine underground.
It is not clear if Mother and Daddy took lunch there.
There was a time when crawling through narrow and twisted paths underground had a great deal of appeal to me, and I would have been glad to take lunch in the subterranean lunch room.
Now, in my dotage, I have grown more claustrophobic and think I would prefer an al fresco meal in the bright sunlight of New Mexico.
The wiki article (linked in the Comments) says that the current lunch room was developed in the 1950’s, so the catering arrangement (noted on the reverse of the postcard) must have expired during the twenty years that followed the publication of this postcard souvenir.
President Carter extended the boundaries of the Carlsbad Caverns National Park to include a wilderness
area in 1978.
